Coalition for a Democratic Majority

The CDM was formed in 1972 by the late Sen Henry Jackson (D-WA) who headed the conservative wing of the Democratic Party. Jackson and his coalition favored a strong military and promoted the concept of "peace through strength." The CDM has its roots in the intellectual movement of neoconservatism--intellectual and pragmatic, with an emphasis on democracy, anticommunism, and globalism. By the mid-1970s, the Vietnam war had cooled the ardor of the American public for the policy of interventionism, a philosophy of great importance to the CDM. The election of President Jimmy Carter pushed the "hardliners" into action and, in 1976, the CDM helped to found the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), a lobby group for containment militarism. The CPD developed and implemented a new "Soviet Threat" campaign. The broader goal of CDM, however, was to reinstate containment militarism as the central theme of U.S. foreign policy.[1]